Instagram may help you stay slim, a study from the University of Washington claimed Wednesday. According to researchers, sharing photos of meals or workouts on the social media site could help people meet their goals faster.

In a report that will be presented next month at San Jose's CHI 2017 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, scientists interviewed 16 people who consistently posted their meals on Instagram using the #fooddiary or #foodjournal hashtags. Some used the photos as a way to remember what they consumed that day.

Advertisement

Related Content

"The benefit of photos is that it's more fun to do than taking out a booklet or typing hundreds of words of description in an app," said lead author and human-centered design/engineering doctoral student Christina Chung. "Plus, it's more socially appropriate for people who are trying to track their diets to snap a photo of their plate when they're out with friends -- everyone's doing it and it doesn't look weird."

Participants said that support from other Instagram users encouraged them to stick to their healthy eating or fitness goals. One subject said sharing photos of food was a more honest way to keep track of her daily diet - she often skipped entering small portions in food diary apps.

"When you only have one data point for a pizza or donut, it's easy to rationalize that away as a special occasion," said senior author and assistant professor Sean Munson. "But when you see a whole tiled grid of them, you have to say to yourself, 'Wait, I don't actually have that many special days.'"

Unlike other social media networks, Instagram allows users to create multiple accounts for separate purposes under one profile. This mean they can find different groups of people with similar interests.

Users discovered that remaining on Instagram to encourage others helped reinforce positive behaviors after their goals were met.

"Maintenance becomes pretty boring for a lot of people because your quest to hit a goal has worn off," Munson said. "This made things more interesting and meaningful for people because after they got to their goal, they turned to thinking about how they could help others and stay accountable to people who were relying on them for support."